It’s a whole new year and some of you who recently been to the local IT store would have realized the existence of a colorful range of external storage. It’s actually the first one I have seen invented colorful and stylish. Have you wondered why this particular design language? Find out on our review on the WD My Passport.
Initially this design came up from Yves Béhar’s Fuseproject design where they collaborated with WD to create something different yet has its point to prove on why it is designed as such. Well, some can directly stereotype this version to be targeted more to the younger generations who are in Colleges/Universities. It is true, but not entirely. Of course the truth can be associated with the stylish and eye-candy design which teengers would prefer having to carry with them. Hence, the slim design which can fit your pocket becomes another valid reason.
Is this designed for Office usage as well? Of course! This can be handy for companies who rely on plenty of external storage. For example, instead of labeling it with stickers/markers, its easier now with Yellow being the HR documents and Blue being the Legal documents. You do get the idea right? It could save your time and trouble for looking for a particular external storage that you require. The color represents the category that you have categorized with.
Design Language
The WD MyPassport comes in six colors- Yellow, Orange, Red, Blue, White and Black. You can get any colors at all capacities which makes you not to spend more, such as in order to get the Blue color you need to get the 4TB variant. No such thing here as its totally hassle free.
I personally love the design of the new MyPassport as I like it to be colorful. It is half glossy and half matte design while the USB cable (3.0) provided has the same color as the external storage. Come on, you have to agree with me as most external storage available out there is pretty dull and boring,right?
The cable is removable but I do wonder how come there’s no USB Type-C on this? There are a wide range of external storage manufacturers are already releasing with USB Type-C cables rather than the USB 3.0. Having a reversible USB cable is pretty cool though. 😛
The USB cable isn’t the best quality that you can get from WD as it tends to be flexing easily but of course we are always careful with non SSD type storage right?
Beside the USB Connector, there’s a LED indicator that shows if the drive is active or inactive. Nothing much to talk about the external properties as that’s pretty much about it from the outlook.
As for the weight, the 2TB – 4TB variant is 250g while the 1TB variant is 170g. Honestly speaking , it is considered very light and portable. Can we really carry it in our pocket? Yes! You can do that but do ensure that you’re using belt for your pants. 🙂
Software
There’s a software that comes with the My Passport which gives you basic backup needs.
The WD Backup software allows you to choose the available storage device or cloud service such as Dropbox. Once you’ve chosen, then there’s an option which indicates how frequent you would want the back up to take place.
In case you want to keep the data backed up privately, you might need to setup WD Security first which allows encryption using 256-bit. It can also auto unlock if you Tick “Enable auto unlock for this computer” from the computer you setup the WD Security.
There’s also a utility software available in the My Passport for drive management which allows you to view real-time health of the drive. Most probably you won’t be using this as much as the above software as the disk-defrag which comes in Windows is already good enough. The My Passport software is also supported in Mac just in case you wonder.
Performance
Crystal DiskMark test is performed on random read and write performance which you can see on below screenshot. It is pretty decent and around expectation:-
Conclusion
As what we could conclude, the My Passport is definitely attractive, decently designed and well built. The performance is pretty decent and reliable during our 1 month of usage. As we have mentioned, the coloring codes can be pretty much useful for easy batching or tagging rather than adding labels.
The weight is pretty decent too being not too heavy and not too light. Definitely pocket-friendly and compact. Overall, we are happy with this product and there’s nothing much to complain about. Price point could have been slightly lower, however we are pretty used to the currency depreciation here in Malaysia.
The 4TB My Passport that we reviewed is priced at RM709 while 1TB,2TB and 3TB are priced at RM279,RM409 and RM569 respectively. All of them comes with 2 years of warranty. Get one for yourself online via Western Digital’s official store in Lazada ==> http://www.lazada.com.my/western-digital-official-store/